BHMCS to drop charter

In a few weeks the Barnstable Horace Mann Charter School will need a new name as its Board of Trustees voted recently to voluntarily surrender its charter.

Kathleen Szmit

Time to ‘move on and reinvent’

In a few weeks the Barnstable Horace Mann Charter School will need a new name as its Board of Trustees voted recently to voluntarily surrender its charter.

The decision came during a special May 31 meeting, which was followed by an explanatory letter sent home to families of students in grades four and five served by the school.

According to the letter and Sue Leary, chairman of the BHMCS Board of Trustees, the decision to surrender the charter has been in discussion for much of the 2011-2012 school year.

“It’s a big decision to give up a charter. It’s not something you do lightly, but you also have the responsibility to look at the overall picture,” Leary said. “It’s about asking, ‘What’s in the best interest of students?’”

Leary and others, including Supt. Dr. Mary Czajkowski and Tom McDonald, former school committee member, past interim superintendent and former principal of the Grade 5 School, said that the decision was largely based on the fact that the school had met its goals as a charter.

McDonald, who spearheaded the effort to create the charter, which opened in 1998, said that the initial idea behind the Horace Mann concept was to establish a model school.

“The whole idea was basically to become a laboratory for change within a school district,” McDonald said. “The concept behind it is to have a laboratory experience where you can try new initiatives.”

That included focusing on two key elements, according to McDonald, finance and governance.

“The model changed [the school] so it put more decision making at the school level,” McDonald said.

When the school first opened, such site-based management was not a part of district operations, but was an integral aspect of a Horace Mann school.

McDonald said that as a result of the school’s success, the district adopted its own site-based management plan, similar to that of a Horace Mann.

“Site-based management is a key outgrowth to the Horace Mann model,” McDonald said. “That’s one of the initiatives that came about as the result of the Horace Mann model.”

Upon the district’s adoption of site-based management, however, folks at BHMCS found themselves caught in a cycle of redundancy in having to report to the district and the State in similar fashion.

“Duplication of effort doesn’t make sense if it’s not moving the school forward,” Leary said. “The charter requires that the school and school administration do lots of things for accountability purposes that we wouldn’t have to do if we were back in the district.”

When McDonald helmed a workshop with the BHMCS board in February regarding the charter decision, the issue of redundancy was a heavily discussed topic.

“It’s difficult to serve two masters,” McDonald said. “It’s okay to do that when things made sense and were evolving and changing, but that time has passed. In my opinion there is a life cycle to everything and I think that the goals set forth in the original charter were achieved. I told the staff, ‘I think it’s time to move on and reinvent yourself.’”

McDonald also said that legislation regarding Horace Mann schools is challenging.

“The legislation is flawed,” he said. “It’s very difficult to operate, which is why where aren’t that many Horace Mann schools.”

BHMCS was also unique in that all of Barnstable’s students attend the school, rather than having the choice between it and another grade 4-5 school.

McDonald and Czajkowski said that students and their families wouldn’t see major changes in the fall.

“When the kids go to school next fall, they’re not going to see a major difference,” McDonald said. “They’re not going to see any difference other than a great school for the kids.”

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